When “Texas Bigger” is Not Always Better: San Antonio Is Fattest City in the USA
Sometime ago the American Obesity Association declared San Antonio, Texas, the fattest city in the United States. According to statistics from the U.S. Center for Disease Control, 31% of its residents are obese and 65% are overweight: the worst record in the nation.
Every year Men’s Fitness Magazine lists the fattest cities in the United States based on non-scientific factors such as numbers of fast food restaurants, gyms and parks, alcohol use, etc. Every year San Antonio is always near the top of the magazine’s list of fattest cities.
What can be done about San Antonio’s status as one of the fattest cities in the United States?
The answer might be in helping San Antonio’s smallest citizens lose weight.
“Obesity is being programmed between the age of 0 and 3. These are very important formative years,” according to a local pediatrician who specializes in diabetes.
Dr. Robert Trevino is the head of Bienestar, a San Antonio program that helps children lose weight and avoid diabetes by improving their diets and increasing physical activity.
“If we provide a better environment for children,” Dr. Trevino says, “with more fruit, vegetables and activity and limits on television viewing, we will raise a healthier population in the future.”
There is no doubt that San Antonio’s children, even the very youngest, are too fat. One major study done by the University of Texas Department of Pediatrics looked at 7200 children in San Antonio, ages kindergarten to 12th grade. These children were overweight and obese at levels far above the national norms. Researchers concluded that “measures to prevent, reduce or treat childhood obesity are urgently needed.”
A more recent study of 1976 low-income children in San Antonio, Corpus Christi and Austin under age three years found that 35% were overweight and obese and at risk for diabetes and other health problems. The results of this study, funded by the Robert Wood Health Foundation, appear in the February 2007 issue of the American Journal of Public Health.
Dr. Larry Deeb, president of medicine and science at the American Diabetes Association, said this study of three-year-olds points to “the impending disaster we have with diabetes that’s looming all over America.”
“I have now given up being astounded,” he said. “Every time new data comes out, it’s more than I ever would have believed.”
Besides being at risk for diabetes, San Antonio’s overweight children are also developing heart disease.
“Our work shows that the process of hardening of the arteries, arteriosclerosis begins in some people during the teenage years,” said C. Alex McMahan, a statistician at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. His team proved that a child’s weight and cholesterol levels can accurately predict the health of his or her arteries as an adult.
Dr. Henry McGill, a pathologist at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, said, “Ninety percent of heart attacks can be prevented in adults. But it’s got to start in childhood….It’s going to take physicians to support the idea, and it’s going to take parents to carry it out by setting a good model for their children.”
Dr. McGill said the best way to help children is through healthier diet and more exercise, not prescriptions for cholesterol drugs.
Overweight children are not only developing serious diseases over time, they also suffer psychologically. Researchers at the Robert Wood Johnson School of Medicine in New Jersey found that obese females in particular have lower self-esteem by early adolescence, and that all overweight children are “significantly” sadder, lonelier and more nervous than children of normal weights. They also are more likely to drink and smoke as teenagers.
Involving Parents to Help Overweight Kids
Most experts in the field of childhood obesity believe that parents are the key to solving their children’s problems, but many do not want to admit their children have problems.
When Texas legislators wanted to send home “report cards” to parents of overweight children, the measure was shot down as “too much government.”
“The simple fact is that most parents of overweight children do not want to be told that their children are overweight,” believes Professor Daniel Hoffman of the Nutritional Science Department at Rutgers University.
Nutritionist Peggy Visio, a special project coordinator at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, believes in working through adults, not children.
“Parents are the ones who buy the groceries,” she said. ”If you just teach the child, it puts all the burden on them, and that’s not fair. You can’t send the child home to teach the family.”
Parents, in an effort to please their children, often buy them junk food and eat it along with their children. A study published in January 2007 from the University of Michigan actually proved parents eat more high fat foods than adults who do not have children. Researchers concluded that parents buy pizza and other high-fat convenience foods for their children but tend to eat these items themselves.
How Can Parents Help Children to Lose Weight?
The first step is often just to admit your child has a problem.
If you are willing to accept that your child has a problem, you are more than halfway to solving it.
The next step is to check with your physician for guidelines to a better diet. A common sense approach, rather than a radical “quick loss” diet, works best with children. Limit snacks. Eliminate junk foods: replace them with fresh fruits and vegetables instead. Enroll your child in a gym or sports program which can provide your child with regular physical exercise. Limit television and computer time.
If such simple measures do not help your child lose weight over time, you may consider enrolling your child in a professional weight-loss program. Make sure your program uses scientifically proven methods of behavior modification, family involvement, nutritional education, and healthy diet. There should be professionally trained and accredited experts on the staff, such as child psychologists and nutritionists. Stay away from old-fashioned, old-style “weight loss camps” that use punishing methods. If you use a weight-loss camp, find one that has a scientifically oriented program with follow-up so that your child’s weight loss becomes a permanent one.
REFERENCES
“Baltimore Surprised by New Title: America’s Fittest,” USA Today, January 6, 2006, posted at http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-01-06-fittest-city_x.htm
Cummings, Jim. “Texas senator proposes ‘obesity reports’”, NBC News, January 31, 2005, posted at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6890798/
Lorentzen, Amy. “Parents Eat More Fat than Non-Parents,” January 10, 2007, Associated Press news release, posted at CNN News, http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/diet.fitness/01/09/diet.kids.adults.ap/index.html
The New York Times, Letters to the Editor, January 15, 2007, page A18.
Overweight and Obesity in United States Cities, The American Obesity Association Facts and Figures, posted at http://www.obesity.org/subs/fastfacts/cities.shtml
Park, MK, Menard, SW and Schoolfield, J. “Prevalence of Overweight in a triethnic pediatric population of San Antonio, Texas.” The International Journal of Obesity, 2001, Volume 25, pg. 409-416.
Rigby, Wendy. “Researchers say preventing heart disease begins with children,” KENS Channel 5 news, December 1, 2006
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